Woven Body has been formed with moving walls, the ability to teach worldwide, offering information to students who are otherwise unable to study and forging new communities interested in Thai healing arts. In any location, this school is space of learning where students are encouraged to forge a personal, growing, and transformational relationship with Northern Thai Healing Forms. Our teachings entwine anatomical and energetic techniques, personal care, herbal work and meditations providing a traditional experience. Demonstrated through our constant study and research, we are dedicated to preserving this form and often utilize the right to change our approaches to align with accurate information as more translations come forward. Through detailed lectures, guided demonstrations, indepth answering of questions, and extensive hands-on practice, our instructor focuses with each student so that they may intelligently practice this multilayered modality. We stand with our students to build a strong, supportive, and thriving community of Thai healing arts practitioners.

Educational Objective

It is Woven Body's objective is to offer classes which honorably represent the methods and medicine that has been taught to us. At Woven Body, students will learn techniques to expand and refine their current Thai based healing practices with the goal of igniting the interconnectedness of the body, unlocking the body's potential toward efficiency and health. By keeping our teachings separated from other traditions, we preserve and deepen into the Lanna style of massage. In this way, we hope to teach students to be intelligent, healthy, thoughtful, and effective in their approaches to the form. In doing so, our students increase their capacity to help others, which strengthens the health of their clients, in turn builds a healthier surrounding community.

Instruction by Damion Bond

Our course instructor is first and foremost a student Northern Thailand’s Therapeutic practices. She observes the body as a study is balance, a structure whose efficiency relies on the seamless inter-workings of its parts. Damion’s intention is to weave the human form into this seamless cohesion. Her dedication to support, protect, and honor the folk healing methods of Thailand have guided her to study with teachers who preserve Lanna’s medicinal practices. With over 2,000 hours of therapeutic bodywork education, Damion has rooted her practice in Northern Thai practices, focusing on Women’s Health and Birth Care.

In 2008, following her initial Teacher Certification, she founded Woven Body Healing Arts, a school with movable walls and under this umbrella has taught dozens of classes and workshops. With Woven Body, she has traveled the country lecturing about the benefits of Thai healing and certifying students to practice. In being welcomed to join Naga Center’s International Teachers guild, she is now a twice Certified Instructor and leads Naga Center Thai Massage Essentials classes along with advanced classes grounded in the teachings of her main teacher, who wishes to be unnamed. Based in Richmond, VA, Damion is recognized by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork as a Continuing Education Provider (#450888-08) and is a National Board Licensed Massage Therapist (VA) and Oregon Board Licensed Massage Therapist (OR16689). If you are interested in receiving work or to host her teachings please feel free to be in touch.

Thai Massage is called by a multitude of names including Thai Folk Massage, Thai Physical Therapy, Thai Yoga Massage, Thai Yoga Bodywork, Thai Bodywork, The Moving Meditation, Thai Medical Massage, and Sacred Thai Healing. The style we teach and practice at Woven body is of Lanna (Northern Thai) tradition and has roots in Reusi healing methods. Massage is one root of therapeutic practices grown out of a culture whose focus is nature, health, longevity, and the generation of good will. As called in it's native language Gaai Ya Paap Bam Bat, Thai Folk Physical Therapy is a massage form that uses element-based analysis techniques which create balance in the body systems by easing the relationship between the five layers of the physical body, aka skin, tissue, channels, bones and organs. This rejuvenating treatment decompresses and cleanses your physical body by directly soothing the muscular, skeletal, nervous, and digestive systems. It quiets the mind, settles the body and frees tension allowing the body to work more efficiently with an aligned range of motion. Each session is unique and addresses body ailments as they arise and can be used preventative care for future illness.

Thai Massage sessions begin with a lifestyle consultation, which will asks questions about body aches, daily habits, occupation, and physical patterns, giving Damion a general understanding of the movements and ailments of your body. During your session, she will use her hands, elbows, forearms, knees, and feet to sense and soothe muscular constrictions. Your session flow through a combination of muscle compressions, trigger point release, and passive stretches to your joints, and may include the use of steaming herbal bundles, fire cupping, spoon scraping, scarf wrapping, tok sen (practiced with a wooden mallet and pestle), chet (practiced with a slice of plai root tenderly sweeping the skin), and dhee (beating) techniques to therapeutically soothe ailments. Homemade Thai herbal oils and lineaments may be added to sessions that require deep work and abdominal therapy. Our massage sessions are practiced on a thick comfortable mat with supportive pillows and a face cradle if needed. For total comfort, we prefer our clients to attend sessions in dark clothing that is easy to move in, long pants and shoulders covered is welcomed.

A Note from Our Instructor

My perspective on this medicinal massage form is that of a dancer, anatomist, and body worker.There has been no healing method more powerful nor more effective on my body than Thai Folk healing. Based on the gratitude I feel for this form, I have dedicated myself to the path of helping others and to protecting and teaching the authenticity of the Thai healing lineage that has been shared with me. My fervent studies of anatomy, spirit psychology, symbolism, Thai Folk medicine and efficient movement patterning are all called forward and blossom in the space of Woven Body. I chose the name to reflect the highest intention of my work, to weave the body into seamless cohesion, unified whole. It is my hope for your body to remember its natural range of motion, place of calm and healthy alignment, and to go there permanently. In the class room, all students can expect direct attention, body adjustments toward proper practice form, and exercises that suit all learning types. I do my very best to take my time answering fully all questions as best I can, and call on my teachers when a question reaches above my understanding. It is my policy to give credit always to those before me and to my peers as they present their own research. It is my intention to draw forward each student's innate ability so that they find and access their practitioner's confidence easily. At the end of each teaching and practice session, I leave the studio feeling centered, calm, limitless, awake and free and it is my hope that my clients and students share this same centeredness.